Violets Are Red
by kaho.co
Summary: Cloti one-shot. FFVII doesn't belong to me. Reviews are welcome!


Her lips are on mine, dissolving into one, sucking, stealing, sending air to carry oxygen to every cell in our bodies. I bite her lower lip ever so lightly, following the t that was perhaps inaudible, then utter the f. I'm not sure it was her or my lower lip that I just bit, maybe it was both.

A puff of air travels through the airways, then exits my lips only to enter those of the person who bears that name.

Her parted lips leave mine, in the dark I can see those eyes radiate the colour of the violet from one distant spring afternoon.

"What?" she whispers, in response to my calling her name.

I feel on my skin lingering vibrations in her throat, beneath which her vocal cords lie.

I can only name a handful of flowers. Roses, lilies, tulips. That's pretty much where the list ends. But I know what violets look like, for they were my mother's favourite.

One hazy lukewarm day many years ago, I was alone in a field by a river, lying on my back, looking up at the lazy spring sky for no particular reason. The field was bushy with many kinds of grasses, whose names I never bothered (and probably never will) to learn, dotted with some yellow flowers (dandelions?) here and some white flowers there, as if someone had waved a paint brush.

Among them I spotted some little purple petals. I knew they were violets because I remembered my mother saying they were her favourite. My eyes browsed through the field in search of nothing in particular, then stopped at the sight of something foreign.

I rose on my elbows and squinted my eyes to look closely. It looked like any other violet, except that its petals had a layer of red over their signature deep purple. It was redder than pink but not red enough to be red. I looked about, and could find several of them bearing the same colour.

I stood up and walked to one of them. As gently as I could, I picked the tender stem which snapped with a moment's hesitation, then headed back home.

I remember my mother smiled when I handed it to her, but I can't remember what her expression looked like for the late afternoon light flooding in through the window was too bright.

She put it in a tiny vase (or maybe it was just a glass) and it stayed on our dining table for the next few days.

I don't know if she said it actually was a violet, but in my mind it was always a violet.

Whenever my lips breathe out her name, it's the colour of the violet that reflexively surfaces in my head, or right in front of my naked eyes as she looks at me in answer, with those eyes of hers onto which the violet painted its reddish purple hue.

To say those names, the tip of my tongue touches the roof of my mouth and my upper teeth brushes the flesh of my lower lip.

That's what happened on that misty day at that gloomy station.

I have no recollection of how I got there. I was in a daze and everything was blurry. My mind was torn into pieces. My body was heavy, but not heavy enough to make me feel that I really existed in a physical world.

The only thing I knew for certain was that it was raining. A thin layer of mist felt cool on my skin.

"Are you okay?" A voice reached my eardrums and before I knew it it traveled through my mind and body. Without realizing, my mouth formed those sounds, which in turn metamorphosed into her name, my code word.

Slowly I opened my eyes, my head still dizzy, and right there I found her.

Those violet eyes, on the unmistakable face of the girl that had been ingrained in my memory, were looking at me, exuding concern and confusion. Her hair, slightly damp with rain, cocooned the outline of her face like pale smoke.

"What?" she says again, then brushes a kiss against my temple.

"I was remembering."

I bury my face in the crook of her neck, inhaling her scent through my nostrils, the ether her body distills and seeps out then into my cells.

I feel her fingers combing my hair. I hold her tighter, and the back of my hand touches the ends of her hair.

A vague image of her face of that day at the misty station resurfaces in my mind then quickly fades away, only to be fished out again from the bottomless spring of my mind someday.

I bite my teeth into the pale, tender flesh of her chest. Her body tenses for a moment but loosens up soon. Even in the dark I can see the reddish mark that I have just left.

I look up and she slowly opens her eyes, in which the violets of my distant childhood are trapped forever.

Those days are in the past and I don't need to go look for them. The Nibelheim I need is already, and will always be, in my arms.


End file.
